


an old friend

by babybel



Category: Lost
Genre: @ the character death warning.. charlies dead but he's ok he's just a ghost, Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s04e01 The Beginning of the End, Ghosts, M/M, Talking To Dead People, the show didn't give me enough hurley and ghost!charlie content so here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 14:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18640240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel
Summary: Hurley doesn't know what's worse- if he's hallucinating another imaginary friend to mess himself up or if Charlie is actually, really there.





	an old friend

**Author's Note:**

> im gay and sad. c'est la vie. enjoy

He couldn’t be seeing what he was seeing. It didn’t make sense; it wasn’t fair. He’d done everything he could to prevent the visions- ran, got himself put away again, got back on his anti-hallucination meds. By all logical standards, a dead man should not be standing in front of him. Then again, logical standards never applied to him. 

He was shaking, head to toe. He couldn’t stop, didn’t have the presence in his own body to force himself still. There was an unavoidable, unquenchable need to run. 

“No, no-” The thing was holding up both of its hands. “Don’t take off again. You left me alone in that store, I looked like a bloody idiot.” 

“You didn’t look like anything,” Hurley managed, finding himself extremely short of breath. “You’re not here, you’re not real.” 

The thing sighed, scrubbing a hand over its head. The real Charlie’s hair was never that short. “Can you just take a seat and calm down?”

“You’re not real,” Hurley repeated. 

“Not bloody real,” the imagined Charlie muttered, rubbing his chin. “Does this feel real to you, mate?” He struck Hurley - albeit very gently - across the face. 

This Charlie wasn’t wearing his ring- a lucky break for Hurley, because the thing’s hand was just as solid as any real man’s. “You,” Hurley said, gingerly brushing his fingers over the sore spot on his cheek, “are dead.”

The thing shrugged, tipped his head from side to side like he was mulling it over. “Yeah. I am. You ready to sit down now?”

Hurley sighed, and he couldn’t bring himself to look straight on at the thing. It hurt too bad, for one. Even seeing it in his periphery was enough to bring back the dreadful ache in his chest, the hollow pain that he’d felt the night he found out. For two, it was uncomfortable. Weird. It looked just like Charlie had, except for a few things that were a little off. The hair. The clothes. The makeup. This would be Charlie, Hurley realized, if he’d ever seen him off the island. 

It was still too much to believe, though. Hurley had seen people who weren’t real before, and it was no different now. Yes, his meds were stronger, but so were the memories he was trying to deal with. This was just another, crueler Dave. 

“You weren’t done. On the island.” The thing was inspecting its nails, painted black. “You left before you were finished there.” 

“We got rescued, man,” Hurley said quietly. “We had to go.” He knew, though, that the thing was right. Whatever part of him this hallucination came from - probably the part that still woke up from nightmares about what Desmond must have seen in the Looking Glass, the part that wished more than anything in the damn world he’d known that when he tried to join them on the outrigger, that would be the last time he ever saw Charlie; their last hug, their last conversation, that his pathetic “whatever, I love you too” would be the last ‘I love you’ Charlie ever heard - it was one he’d been trying to ignore since the rescue. 

“Doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t have left.” 

“You’re just the part of me that feels guilty. I know how this works, dude.” Hurley rubbed his eyes, then his temples, then just let his face rest in his hands. 

“I’m offended.” And it sounded so much like Charlie. The sort of bored lilt disguising his regular buoyant playfulness, the faux alarm. It was kind of too much. The thing smiled, a warm, soft Charlie smile, and laughed Charlie’s laugh. “I get that you wanted to leave. I mean, we all just wanted to go home, right?”

“You’re not real,” Hurley murmured, staring at the ground. He had half a mind to cover his ears, just to block it out. 

The thing rolled Charlie’s eyes. “Ask me something only I would know. Something you don’t know the answer to.” 

Hurley considered not saying anything. It would be easier, not giving him any option to start doubting himself more than he already did. But, driven by the part of him that would give anything to make amends for his shitty last goodbye, he asked, “Where’s your ring? You’re not wearing it.” 

“Right.” The thing held up a hand, wiggled its fingers. “Gave it to Aaron. Before Des and I took off on the outrigger. It was a thing in my family. Passing it down. And obviously I didn’t have any kids of my own to give it to, so…”

And that was new information. Hurley couldn’t have even guessed at that, let alone known it. He looked up, over at Charlie - because it really was Charlie, it had to be - and he almost ran again. Not because he was scared of ghosts. Of course not. It was because he was scared of actually looking at Charlie again, of having to acknowledge, all over again, his death. “It’s really you,” he said, slowly.

“Yeah.” Charlie crossed his legs and leaned back against the table. “I’ve only been trying to tell you for the past day and a half.” 

“Charlie, I’m sorry,” Hurley blurted out. His chest hurt like it had the night Desmond told him. He tried to organize everything he wished he’d said into something he could read out just to get it over with. “I’m-”

“Not your fault.” Charlie shrugged. “I chose to do it anyway. And there’s more important things we sort of have to talk about, so if-”

“I’m sorry I blew it off when you tried to say goodbye to me,” Hurley said, feeling his throat start to close up. “I should have listened to you, I should have- known something was going on. I’m sorry I was so… and that was the last thing you ever heard from me. I’m- sorry I wasn’t better, okay?”

Charlie nodded, shrugged. “It’s fine, man. You know, you didn’t have to…” He shrugged. “Say anything. I knew you cared about me. It was sort of obvious. I wasn’t expecting a big movie monologue goodbye either.” 

“But-”

“You said you loved me.” Charlie picked at his nail polish. “Gave me what it took to be able to swim down there and do it, I think.”

Hurley was silent. 

“And I do love you, man, I really do.” Charlie was sort of smiling his old crooked smile. He chuckled. “But honestly, I need to get a message to you.”

“What?” Hurley wiped the tear that was falling towards his chin. 

“Only what I’ve been trying to tell you forever.” Charlie leaned forwards, hands on his knees. “For the past day. Whatever. You need to go back to the island.” 

Hurley looked away from him. “I can’t.”

“You checked yourself in here, you can check yourself out,” Charlie said, “and you have more than enough cash to get back on a plane, and-”

“Why?” Hurley couldn’t really listen to it anymore, and he glared at Charlie, half expecting to be able to see through him. He couldn’t. “Why would I ever go back to that place?”

“It needs you.” 

“It killed you,” Hurley said, and he was close to yelling. “It took Libby away from me and it took you away from me, and if you think I’m just going to-”

“It’s a good place, Hugo.” Charlie let the serious expression drop for a moment, allowed himself a smile at Hurley’s given name. “It’s actually a really good place, it’s just… under bad management. You’ve got to change that.” 

“How?” Hurley didn’t know what he should be thinking, much less what to do with the information Charlie was giving him once he could process it. 

“You’ll figure it out when you get there,” Charlie assured him. “All you’ve got to do now is get out of this place and on a bloody flight. It’s really important that you do that, alright?”

“Charlie-”

“I didn’t die so you could just sit here on your ass and feel sorry for me. Get back up, get back out there.” Charlie nodded firmly. 

Hurley wiped his eyes again. “Alright.”

“Alright?”

“Yeah, alright.” Hurley nodded back. 

“That’s my guy.” Charlie grinned, and stood up. 

“Hey- Charlie?” Hurley looked up at him. “If you’re… if you can hit me, and I feel it, does that mean you’re really here?”

Charlie shrugged. “Sort of. Only to you, I think.”

“Can I give you a hug?” Hurley asked, and he felt bad. The last time he’d hugged Charlie, he’d been dismissive, and silly, and it was the last time he’d seen him. 

“Course.” Charlie went over to him and bent down a little to hug him. 

It was a little uncomfortable. The angle wasn’t perfect. But Charlie felt solid in Hurley’s arms, and that was perfect, and when Charlie stood up straight and gave him another smile, Hurley wanted to ask him to come back, and to stay that way forever, or for at least another minute. “Are you going?” he asked instead. 

“Yeah.” Charlie looked around, surveying the grounds of the hospital. “I should be off, yeah.”

“And will you- are you going to come back?”

Charlie snorted. “Of course. Until whoever’s up there stops me, I’m going to keep coming back.”

Hurley tried to smile. “Alright.” 

“I’ll see you around, mate.” Charlie smiled, and then started walking away. 

“I’ll see you,” Hurley called after him. 

Charlie disappeared before he was halfway down the hill. 

“Hey, Hurley,” said a voice over his shoulder. 

He turned to see one of the nurses, and he wiped his eyes one last time. “Hey, Becca.” 

“Are you alright? You seem upset.” She laid a hand on his arm. 

“I’m fine,” Hurley promised. “Just talking to an old friend.”

She nodded. “Right. Do you want to come back inside? You’ve been out here for an hour, and I heard it’s going to rain later.”

“Sure.” Hurley stood and gathered the notebook and watercolors he’d been struggling to work with. He let the nurse walk him across the grounds and back into the hospital, looking up at the sky. It did look like rain. Gray. 

When they reached his room, he thanked her and closed his door behind him. He sat at the little desk by the wall, and started both brainstorming ways to get back to the island and counting the minutes until Charlie returned. 

**Author's Note:**

> if u ever want to talk lost my tumblr is @sunhwa-sunshine!!


End file.
